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Digital Monochrome

by Paul Gallagher

It occurred to me during a recent lecture that I do not often cover my workflow from full colour RAW file to finished black and white print. This was highlighted by one of the attendees of the lecture who asked why it was, that when I was showing my black and white workflow I always begin with the scan from a black and white negative. I must admit they were right, considering most of the people who attend my lectures are digital users and there is a certain process to go through before the image even begins to look monochrome. I have remedied my ways and the following is my journey from colour to fully finished monochrome image, ready to print.

For this example I have not chosen the perfect, colour camera RAW file with which to convert. On the contrary, I chose one of the RAW files that I was somewhat disappointed with. At the time I made the exposure I was on a single-width, busy footpath in the gorges of the Chamonix valley, in France, and I had very little time to set up the image and make the exposure before I was surrounded by a blend of folk who ranged from interested in what I was doing to becoming down right frustrated by my blocking their way to the top!

The image was taken on a Nikon D700, fitted with a 24 to 70mm lens. The ISO was set at 200 and the camera was mounted on a tripod (hence taking up the width of the entire path!). The camera was set on manual and the lens was at 28mm. All I had time to do was average out the exposure, which resulted in five seconds at f18 and I fitted a polariser to cut the reflection from the surface of the water and soften its appearance. After the exposure I looked at the histogram and things seemed okay but I knew that I had a little bit of clipping at either end of the histogram in both the highlights and the shadows. I put my camera away and apologised for being an obstruction and made my way down and back to the car. Although the histogram on the back of your DSLR is extremely helpful, do not take it as truly accurate, because often it is not. It does provide a good overall guide to how your exposure was centred. Often I will adjust my exposure away from either end of the histogram to prevent any unwanted surprises when I return to my computer with large areas of blown highlights and blocked shadows. On this occasion though, I did not have the choice, so I had to work with what I brought home with me!

Fig 1 shows what I was presented with when I first opened the file. With the highlight and shadow clipping warning switched on in Adobe Camera RAW you can see the problem areas with the shadow clipping in blue and the highlight clipping in red. Normally what I do at this stage is switch these warnings on and off to reveal what I have beneath and to also establish how far I need to go to recover what is needed in the way of detail.

Fig 2 What I now decide is if I need to crop any of the image. The aspect ratio of Nikon digital files is often too long and narrow for me so I quite often opt to crop. On this occasion the area of sky that shows red highlight clipping can go, as the sky can never added anything to the composition anyway. Secondly, the foreground has an annoying rock peeking into the bottom of the frame so I decided to crop that as well.

Fig 3 With the cropping complete I now had very little highlight clipping to worry about and my main concern was the shadow clipping. Beginning with the highlight, I used the 'recovery' slider to eliminate the residual clipping and bring back the highlight details in the moving water.

Fig 4 With the highlights sorted, I turned my attention to the clipped shadows. For this I used the 'fill light' slider to remove almost all of the shadow clipping. As this process takes place, the entire image becomes brighter as this affects not simply the shadows, but all of the image.

Fig 5 As a result of using the 'fill light' slider, I felt that the overall image was too light and had lost a little of the contrast I wanted. I used the exposure slider to darken the image slightly but still retained the shadow detail I had recently recovered.

Fig 6/7 With the overall exposure and cropping completed for Adobe Camera RAW, I turned my attention to what I needed for a black and white image to work and consider the colour information I can work with. The natural lighting in the image is a little flat and this was deliberate as more sunlight (I waited for the sun to go behind a cloud) would have caused havoc with the highlights in the water even more than we have seen and the contrast ratio between shadow and highlight would have been unworkable. The main colours to be used here are the greens and yellows. I then opened the HSL/Grayscale tab in Adobe Camera RAW and began with the saturation sliders for both yellow and green. I enhanced both of these colours almost excessively and then clicked on the 'Luminance' slider and increased the luminance of both colours. It is important to remember at this stage that we are not aiming for a wonderful colour print so I was not alarmed with the image looking over saturated because I am beginning to separate the values that will eventually be a series of greys in the final image.

Fig 8 With most of the Adobe Camera RAW work completed I then opened the detail tab and applied some camera RAW pre-sharpening using the pre-set devised by the Pixel Genius group for landscape work. After this I opened up a copy of what I had completed in Adobe Camera RAW into Photoshop CS5, ready for the next stage of the monochrome journey.

Fig 9 In Photoshop I selected Image>Adjustments>Black and White.

Fig 10 At this stage my image appeared for the first time in monochrome and a 'Black and White' dialogue will appear with several sliders depicting different colours.

Fig 11 Once again, I turned my attention to the yellow and green sliders and used the previously enhanced colour information and enhanced it even more, but seeing the effect in monochrome. When happy with the effects I clicked 'okay'.

From this moment on I reverted to the way I always work, which is using lasso selections, with various 'feather' settings, along with curves adjustment layers. We now have a great benchmark from which to work and we have used the colour information to its best. Now it is important to not loose our direction in the creation of a good black and white print, so we must decide on what I call 'working zones'. These are areas where we need to enhance or alter the tonal relationships within the image to bring about the impact visualised when I was there. For this particular image I decided the areas to be the trees either side of the river, the distant gorge walls, the deepest shadow areas of the boulders in the river and the shadow areas beneath the trees. I then began a gradual process of 'nibbling' away at the tonal via curves adjustment layers beginning with the steep gorge walls in the top centre of the image.

Fig 12/13 I selected this area and opened a curved adjustment layer. Using curves I then lowered the value of the highlights and also darkened the deeper greys separating the gorge walls from the closer trees.

Fig 14/15 I then made a lasso selection of the trees on the right of the image and using curves, I enhanced the highlights so they more closely matched the tonal values of the trees on the left of the frame.

Fig 16/17 Next I selected the main body of trees on the left of the image and with curves, I darkened the deeper greys so the tonal range would balance perfectly with the trees to the right of the images on the opposite side of the river.

Fig 18/19 The next area of work was the shadows below the trees on the lower left of the image. Having made a lasso selection I then raised the values of the shadows using curves, giving the shadows visual detail and an inner glow.

Fig 20/21 I was still a little bothered by the depth of the shadows beneath the two foreground rocks in the water, which I felt posed a barrier to the eye exploring the image. I decided to select both of these areas and lift out the hidden detail in the depths. It is worth noting here that I used a considerably smaller 'feather' on my selection to avoid creating a 'halo' during the adjustment process.

Fig 22/23 The last, and very critical adjustment I made to the image, was to the river. For this I selected the body of moving water, being very careful not to include the darker areas of the boulders I had just worked hard to recover, and applied quite an extreme curve to make the water look 'wetter'. You can see from the curve line I have darkened the darker tones considerably then pegged back the highlights. This is a process that I feel is always needed in monochrome images containing water as the recorded values always look somewhat flat and silvery. Bearing in mind, you may recall, I also used a polariser during the exposure!

So there we have it. The journey I follow in converting a pretty drab camera RAW file into a black and white image that does the moment justice. I would of course resize the image and apply a little unsharp mask probably excluding the water as water NEVER looks gritty! The most important aspects to remember are understanding what colour information you have at hand to enhance, and before you even begin selections and curves, identify your 'working zones' otherwise how can you possibly create without knowing what you want the finished piece to be and 'say' .

Oh one last tip...set your camera up somewhere quiet and secluded!!



Updated 27/04/2026 16:44:22 Last Modified: Monday, 27 April 2026